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I wonder if these stores will suffer any more from shoplifting than regular stores. I assume they will function roughly the same, i.e. an alarm goes off as an u
by tribby 10y ago
I wonder if these stores will suffer any more from shoplifting than regular stores. I assume they will function roughly the same, i.e. an alarm goes off as an unpaid high ticket item leaves the store, but what's the psychological impact of having a human near the front door? will people feel they are stealing from a robot rather than a person (in fact they are stealing from neither), and will that lower the cognitive barrier to theft?
it comes with built-in plausible deniability for the guilty, too -- "sorry, I guess your robo-store is broken, let me try signing in and out of my amazon app"
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- johncolanduoni 10y agoIt doesn't seem to function the same at all. If an item is detected leaving the store, then the person who took the item (or the person the store thinks took the item) is charged. And if they aren't detected, there's no way to have an alarm.
- tribby 10y agohow exactly is someone charged when they don't have an amazon account / connected phone / whatever method of payment is being used here? are you saying you need to swipe your card on the way in?
- dangrossman 10y agoYes. You need to have the Amazon Go app installed on your phone, and you scan your phone at what looks like a turnstile to enter the store, from the store's PR videos. Then the store keeps track of what you pick up using computer vision, your phone and various sensors, and charges everything you walk out with to your account. Unless you can avoid the requirement to load an app and scan it to get into the store, walking out of the store with goods stuffed in your jacket or bag isn't shoplifting, because the store knows you picked those things up and is charging them to your Amazon account.
- tribby 10y agoah, interesting - thanks for the explanation (and sorry if that was mentioned in the article, I couldn't get past the paywall).
- Larrikin 10y agoSo children are not allowed in the store? What's stopping someone from just stuffing their kid full of high end goods and asking them to wait in the car?
- harryh 10y agoThe same thing that stops people from doing that in a regular store? Mostly good morals backed up with cameras and the occasional security guard.
- trome 10y agoTheft rates can get pretty high, look at the Tide theft phenomenon.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- somethingwitty1 10y agoEveryone entering the store has to be scanned in. A parent could bring a child in, but they are scanned in on the parent's account. Similar to how at some offices, visitors are scanned in using the employee's badge. At least, that is my understanding of how it works.
- derefr 10y agoI don't know how they designed it, but if they use anything like a phone-unlocked turnstile or revolving door to let people in, they might just count every person that comes in until the gate closes again as being attached to the account of the person that opened the gate. So when any of them leave with something, that's a charge to you.
- 10y ago
- dualarte 10y agoYes, that's how it's working for now, anyway. The app has a QR code you scan at the entrance to gain access to the store.
- siege_conform 10y agoI think they will still have people working in loss prevention / security. I'm not sure though.
- whazor 10y agoI guess there will be security that will stop non-Amazon customers, and probably help setting up accounts.